Knitted garment that opens at the front

"A younger woman who hangs around older men" -  definition of 'cardigan' according to urbandictionary.com

I have been re-reading Flashman, mainly I must admit because it was available for 99p as one of Amazon's Kindle e-books of the day and I felt like some light reading. One character who plays a prominent role at the beginning of the book is James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan. Famous of course for leading the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854, at the time the book is set he was Commanding Officer of the 11th Light Dragoons, into which our anti-hero is commissioned. The Brudenell family owned a lot of land in what are now the Woodhouse Moor and Hyde Park areas of Leeds, to the north of the university, and local place names still reflect this. There is a Cardigan Road (indeed it's where the recent opera festival was held) and, more pertinently for today's post, there is the Brudenell Social Club, one of Leeds' most prominent music venues.

I have been there to see the Devon Allman Project. The project bit represents the fact that since I last saw Allman, his father died and he decided it would be appropriate to feature more Allman Brothers music in his act. To help with this he has recruited Duane Betts, son of Dickie and obviously named after Duane, as opening act/sideman. It certainly all hit the spot for me. You will have gathered from reading the blog that by and large my musical heart lies in the blues/rock of the early seventies, and from the second song in when Betts did a cover of 'Silver Train' from the Stones' 1973 album Goats Head Soup, I was up for it. So were the rest of the audience, especially a somewhat incongruous party of Norwegians down at the front. They stood out partly because a couple of them were around 6' 9" - for once I don't exaggerate - and partly because the availability of beer for less than £15 a pint had left them all rather exuberant. One of them called out, loudly and repeatedly, for 'Free Bird', which amused those watching quite a lot more than it did Allman himself.

A highlight was an extended version 'Blue Sky', written by Dickie Betts, so here's the original: